August 29, 2006 - This
is so hot off the press, my retinas are burning.
Look at those visuals. Wow. While the first Killzone
didn't exactly ignite the gaming world on fire in
the gameplay department, no one could accuse it
of being an ugly duckling. The PS2 worked like a
dog to bring you graphics like that, while the PS3
simpy purrs like a kitten and delivers jawdropping
eye candy like the images laid out before us.

The
Killzone 2 footage shown during Sony's Pre-E3 Press
Conference still hasn't been confirmed as realtime
gameplay. Many of us consider it to be excellent
looking CG until proven otherwise. The official
word from SCEE VIP or Development Phil Harrison
states that some of the trailers shown during the
presentation were rendered using the ingame assets.
If it is revealed to be CG, Sony just shot themselves
in the foot. If the real game doesn't appear to
be anything close to the majesty of what was shown,
there will be a backlash from here to Japan. Many
of the rabid PS3 fanboys who have been hunkering
down in message boards everywhere raining on the
Xbox 360 fanboys parades, will have to eat a whole
lot of humble pie. Perhaps a worse punishment would
be too force them to play one of 989's sports titles
on the PSone. Shudder......

We
haven't learned much about Killzone for the PS3,
in fact, we're just assuming they'll call it Killzone
2. Guerilla Games has mentioned that they are being
extremely diligent about creating realistic behavioral
AI which will be completely aware of the surrounding
environments, even if the lay of the land changes.
In general terms this could mean that if the environments
suffer realtime damage, the AI will respond accordingly
and for example, may not continue running into a
wall that is no longer present. The relationship
between your character and the NPCs will also be
far more realistic. If a teammate goes down in battle,
other NPCs will race to him and try to get him out
of the line of fire. Guerilla also mentioned that
NPCs will toss you a weapon if you happen to run
out of ammo.

Taking
a rib from Halo and Tribes, Killzone for the PS3
will also feature a multitude of various land, sea
and air vehicles which can be commandeered and used
to turn the tides of battle or simply get you from
point A to point B. Finally we learned that the
gameplay will be very openended and non-linear for
each of the games levels. We're not quite sure just
how non-linear they intend, but it certainly sounds
interesting.

Guerilla
Games didn't quite manage to knock Halo 2 from its
perch atop the FPS hill this past fall, but anything
goes next year when the PS3 comes knocking. With
such buzz surrounding the visuals, Killzone 2 will
be one to watch over this next year.